On the subject of Mars exploration:

How soon until this happens? (Score:1)
by GWBasic (900357) Neutral on Friday September 09, @06:27PM (#13523851)
( http://www.andrewrondeau.com/ )

How soon until someone proposes that we not worry about the return trip and leave the astronauts there permenently?
[ Reply to This | ]

Re:How soon until this happens? (Score:2)
by Quinn_Inuit (760445) Neutral on Friday September 09, @06:44PM (#13523918)

Heck, if I weren't married, I might take that trip. I don't know. Dying doesn't exactly appeal to me, but I could do a lot of really useful research, set up stuff so future expeditions don't have to be one-way...and see Mars. I'm no astronaut or scientist or millionaire, so I doubt I'll see it any other way in my lifetime.

I know it sounds crazy. But to walk just once under an alien sky...darnit, our children deserve the stars, and someone needs to claim that inheritance for them. IMO, if you've never looked up at the sky and wondered why we're stuck here, well, call God and see if you can get a refund or warranty repair job on your soul.

--

Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.

From user antifoidulus, id 807088:

"The hardest thing to find in this sea of information is the truth. "

Um, we're getting what we paid for (Score:5, Interesting)
by Colin Smith (2679) Neutral on Monday August 15, @09:43AM (#13322166)
( http://mrprecision.blogspot.com/ )

We're not paying for space travel, or even space exploration. We're paying for programmes. We get a space programme, then another one, then another one.

When we start paying for results, we'll get space travel and space exploration.

Huhu. I can't believe the DS WiFi Bounty that I set up hit slashdot, g4 tech tv, arstechnica, hackaday, gamedev.net, and so on.

I also can't believe it's up to eighteen hundred dollars. Huhu indeed, I say; huhu.

From http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=148578&cid=12451624
by John Sokol:

Has anyone ever stopped to think about how well evolution works? And that it's all encompassing.

It's an inescapable law of nature. Everything from our software and computer designs (meme's) to music, language and DNA based life is affected by evolution.

Not only that, it's impossible to create something not effected by it.
Even our views of God and our religions evolve. (what blasphemy)

After studying evolution for some time, I became a believer in GOD! Because only god could have created something as powerful as evolution.

My argument goes like this. If we are made in Gods image, and we make machines and tools to build more complex things. Then shouldn't God also? If God were to what would that tool look like. EVOLUTION....

So all this arguing over GOD vs. Evolution is totally stupid. No Evil.

I see science as the study of God's creation. It's sort of our responsibility to understand is and in doing this we can come to know God better

This is from user expro at http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=148137&cid=12413978:

"That is why the smartest thing you can do is to figure out how to stay out of court, unless you are evil and rich and like injustice."

DEVELOPER RANT - Version checking. (Score:5, Interesting)
by argent (18001) Neutral on Thursday April 28, @04:27AM (#12369887)
( http://www.scarydevil.com/~peter/ )

DEVELOPER RANT: don't use if (win_version == nt5.1) use if (win_version >= nt51).

DEVELOP RANT: don't use OS version tests if you can use feature tests instead.

Not a comment specifically directed at you, I don't know if you do this, but I keep running into software on all platforms that doesn't run on older versions even when patches, service packs, hotfixes, software updates, backported libraries, or compatibility fixes have removed the dependency on the specific OS version they hardcoded into the application.

One of the nice things about the Amiga is that all the developer documentation showed code checking library versions instead. Not perfect, but much better than OS version checks. Palm provided hooks to do functional checks down to the entry point level, but then spoiled it by shipping example code doing OS version checking.

I agree censorship is a bad idea, but the problem with a pervasive, persuasive and centralized media (e.g. ClearChannel) in a democracy is that without a critically thinking population the system becomes unstable. A functioning democracy is a self correcting system, but a hidden dependancy of that system is that accurate, verifiable information is provided to the people who must make the decisions. I.e., the voters. It's usually AVAILABLE, granted, but if they don't have it and settle for what they are told by an organized media the end result is EXACTLY the same as if they don't have it. If you can get statistically large numbers of them to dance to your tune, you have effectively taken over the country. The key question is, do enough people engage critical thinking to avoid the electorate being systematically manipulated by misinformation?

Guh. My rat bastard NN/GA/MTD(f) templated breeding arena monstrosity is almost done, but it's late at night and I can't focus. I just spent an hour and a half explaining simple C++ concepts to what will almost certainly be an unreceptive crowd (due no doubt in no small part to my obvious hatred of bad advice and novices which don't know that they are novices.)

Stupid fucking C can't return arrays. God damnit. So stupid. What a useless limitation. Yay for writing entire templates just to get around simple crap like that.

Re:Is Windows fit for the internet? (Score:1)
by nytmare (572906) Neutral on Tuesday November 23, @08:00AM (#10898719)
( http://www.nytmare.org/ )

No it isn't. A secure OS would make it easy for normal users to RECOGNIZE and REMOVE any illegitimate software or processes that have managed to wend their way onto their PC. Windows does not. It takes experts to figure out most infestations, often by using third-party apps like Hijack This to analyze the system. It takes third-party anti-virus and anti-spyware apps to remove the problems, and then only on a case-by-case basis. It takes third-party firewalls to control and inform users about internet traffic entering and leaving their own PC.

Hiding information from users is a mantra that directly undermines security.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=129214&cid=10778910

Your friends are watching you (Score:5, Interesting)
by caitsith01 (606117) Friend of Friend on Tuesday November 02, @07:46AM (#10700179)
( Last Journal: Thursday March 11, @02:32AM )

All around the world, we're watching you today. We love America, we want you to lead and inspire and show us what democracy and freedom and technology can do. But right now we're feeling scared, confused, and angry about what your President has lead you to do over the past three years.

Please, give us back the America we admire and believe in. Don't turn yourselves into a religious state. Don't turn your back on the UN and the other peoples of the world - in the end we are people first, American or French or Iraqi or Chinese second. Give us back the America that went to the moon and carried out the Berlin airlift and brought us the IT revolution. Give us back the America of Kennedy's vision and MLK's dream.

And please, don't let the world's most successful democracy be reduced to a joke with a repeat of last election's Floridan antics.

From the user named pavon:

"Elegant systems are a joy to use for tasks that mesh with the flexibility built into the system, but once one needs to do something that doesn't quite fit the system, the grand design becomes an obsticle instead of a help, and those loosely bound, ugly amalgamations begin to look more appealing for the absolute freedom that they provide."

al Qaueda's number 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, gave thanks to God in the fall of 2003 for Bush's policies:
"We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan...If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death."
-From an audiotape sent to al-Jazeerah 9-10-2003, quoted in CIA agent Michael Scheuer's book

From Scheuer himself, a longtime expert on the forces of evil:
"There is nothing bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion and occupation of Iraq."

One of the Saudi "jihadi" groups, quoted in the Economist on June 3 2004:
"A communiqué from a Saudi jihadi group expresses the hope that George Bush will be re-elected because his 'haste to use force, his lack of wisdom and religious fanaticism have roused the Islamic nation'."

by temojen (678985) Neutral on Friday September 10, @01:02PM (#10215917)
( Last Journal: Friday March 12, @02:54AM )

Thug with a baseball bat trying to kill you? Crush his throat. Firetruck 20 feet away going 70km/h? floor it. Lying in the street with broken bones? Get out of traffic, do (minimal) self first-aid, and make sure someone's called an ambulance.

Most of the real emergency things that have happened to me, I was too busy dealing with the situation to notice stress. What gets to me is the things that I can't do anything about.